In the aviation industry, airline companies are provided with advisory service bulletins for facilitating maintenance, repair and service of aircraft. Some of the advisory service bulletins are provided by aircraft manufacturers based on feedback from airline service personnel and are typically prepared for specific aircraft owned by a specific airline company in response to aviation safety standards.
Service bulletins are often lengthy and complicated documents that need significant man hours for sorting and finding sections relevant to a particular aircraft. For example, a service bulletin on scribe line damage to aircraft skins can be hundreds of pages in length. Airlines need a sorting tool that quickly guides service personnel through service bulletins.
Conventional aircraft applications require entering exact configuration data of repairs on an aircraft. Entering large amounts of data, such as location, thickness, fastener type, and material type for dozens of different repairs can be taxing and error prone. In some instances, data can be entered into a laptop, but climbing on a ladder several stories high in the wind and rain while trying to enter data in a laptop or on a clipboard can be difficult.
Manufacturers and regulators need records of findings during a service bulletin inspection to assess risk. If damage is found to be a rare event, fleet inspection thresholds and inspection intervals can be adjusted accordingly to minimize cost for airlines. If damage is found to be widespread in the fleet, inspection thresholds and intervals can be shortened to maintain safe operation for the fleet as a whole. Current methods for getting this data are cumbersome and require airline personnel to record data on paper for later entry and analysis.
In general, there lacks an efficient approach for reporting and reviewing information regarding the status of aircraft (e.g., damage and/or malfunction) to enable quick dispatch of aircraft repair, service and/or maintenance. As a result, there is a need for an improved system and method for providing data and information on aircraft to service personnel for improved response to maintenance, service and repair decision-making.